


Where The Wind Takes Me - Side Chapters

by queerSeth



Category: Original Work
Genre: NaNoWriMo, Non-Linear Narrative, One Shot, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29098293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerSeth/pseuds/queerSeth
Summary: A collection of all the filler chapters from my Nanowrimo work (2020-2021)Andi spontaneously travels through time against her will. Typically, in the story, she jumps between 2020CE, 1755CE, and 2000-1750BCE, but, occassionally, she finds herself in places she never returns to. These are those stories.





	1. One Small Misstep

The first striking feature of this new place was that the sun, which was beginning to rise, rose very quickly, and looked very much larger, redder, and more ominous. As it rose above the horizon, which, itself, looked wrong, in that it was very curved and had no features such as mountains or valleys, I felt a boiling sensation on my hand. Looking down, I realised that it was the only part of my body left uncovered. I had a full body suit on, but my left glove was dangling off my wrist like I had needed more dexterity for a task, and it was too cumbersome to leave on.

I hastily put the glove on, and the burning feeling seemed to subside a little, but there were still aches in my knuckles, and it felt like bubbles were forming on my hand. I looked around, holding my hand as I got used to this new pain. In front of me, there was a powerbox, with a blinking red light, and three exposed wires. I stared at it, tilting my head, as though that would help me make sense of the strange box. 

“Where have you been?” a voice yelled from behind me. Startled, I fell forward, and screamed out as I caught myself with my left hand. A shot of searing pain raced through my forearm, stopping at the elbow. There were footsteps, or what I could only guess were footsteps, racing toward me from behind. I was wailing, and I had fallen to the ground, with my arm cradled under me like a baby. A person grabbed me, pulling me with obvious strain, yet still clearly trying to be gentle. I was carried by three people into a dome shaped tent made of thin metal.

“What were you doing, idiot?” one asked, pulling the helmet off of my face. I whimpered. The three faces staring down at me were completely obscured by tinted glass masks, not unlike what you see in sci-fi, or even just real life. It was like an astronaut suit, but thinner and more reflective. The suits were a dark grey, not the cliche white, and the masks only covered the eyes. The mouths were simply covered in the same dark grey material, with tubes reaching through to the inside, and attached to a large sack on the side of the suits.

“I-I,” I tried to speak. “I don’t know!”

The pain was too much. I assumed I had broken my arm, and for once in my life, I had no idea how to get through this. Trying to think rationally was almost impossible. Every thought I had seemed to be cut short by another wave of shooting pains, and looking around hurt my head, with all the lights and metal around. 

One of the people removed their mask, so that I could see their eyes. “I’ve never seen you before. Are you from X12?”

I sputtered and shook my head frantically. “I’m not from anywhere!”

Another one walked away and muttered something to a fourth person in the room. When they came back, my hands were bolted to the table I was lying on. I screamed out in pain as they removed my left glove.

“You were outside in the day, without your glove?” the first one asked, incredulously. I whimpered again. “Who are you?”

I shook my head, fighting against the restraints as they bolted my legs down. “Please,  _ please, _ I promise I’m no one. Please let me go. Oh, god, please, my arm!”

The third one held up a hand, and they all moved away from me. They whispered among themselves as I tried to get some deep breaths in. When they returned, two of them loosed my restraint, but I was still unable to move. My breathing was slower, but the panic I felt had not subsided.

“You used the word ‘god’,” the first person started. “Why?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Because I’m in a lot of pain.”

They looked back at the fourth person, who rose from their chair and walked over to us. There was another pain in my arm, that grew to blinding levels, then slowly subsided. I let out a long exhale as the pain completely dulled, until I couldn’t feel it at all.

“God doesn’t exist,” he said. “Everyone knows that.” He leaned over me, close enough that I could feel his breath. “No one says his name anymore. They haven’t for over one thousand years. Why did you?”

I opened my eyes. So I was at least a thousand years forward, probably not on Earth, and completely at the mercy of these people standing around me. I could sense something, but couldn’t place my finger on it. Finally, I spoke. “What is X12?”

They all stirred uncomfortably. The first one, the one with his eyes uncovered, touched my shoulder. “They aren’t good people.”

I nodded, trying to get them to believe that I wasn’t one of them. The second man stood to full height. 

“What were you doing in the reaches?”

“The reaches?” I asked.

He nodded. “The outskirts, beyond our defenses. We found you next to our source. Why were you there? Why was your glove off so close to the light?”

I closed my eyes again, trying to remember. Sometimes, I could remember details of the person I had become. A history, or memory of what I was meant to have been doing in the moments before I phased. Each version of me had a backstory, though I could rarely remember it. Sometimes, I phased into places I was meant to have been in before. I had friends and a life from the “first time” I was there, I just hadn’t lived through it yet, and may never do. Still, as hard as I tried, nothing came to me. After a few seconds, all four of them sighed.

“It’s no use asking questions to someone who won’t remember the answers,” the fourth one mused. “Perhaps he suffered a shock, and his memory is gone.”

I looked between all of them. “I’m not a man,” I said. “I’m a woman.”

They all shuddered and looked at me again, but before any of them could say anything on the matter, an alarm blared from outside of the tent. They all immediately stood and ran out, and only the second man stayed a moment to tell me to stay put, and squeezed my arm on his way out of the door. A loud commotion had begun outside, with screams and whistles sounding over the offensive noise of the alarm. The lights in the tent I had been left in went out, and my vision began swimming. I braced myself against the table as I blacked out.


	2. Cold And Alone

It was winter. I was surrounded by trees, all laden with heavy piles of snow that caused them to bend and loomed over me with a sinister feeling. I couldn’t hear anything or anyone nearby, and the trees only seemed to be packed thicker and thicker everywhere I looked. There was no path, no sound, and I was completely alone.

I supposed the first thing to do would be to find a way out of the forest. I wasn’t particularly cold, given that my clothes all felt like real fur, and I had plenty on, so I didn’t need a fire right away. Food and water also didn’t feel too urgent. Given the warmness in my stomach, I figured I - or whoever I was here - had eaten recently.

_ Out of the forest,  _ I thought, looking around. There weren’t even fresh footprints, even from myself. Whoever I was, I wasn’t here before a moment ago. That happened sometimes. I guessed it was so that the universe didn’t have to create a whole new person for me to be, just a new body. I was plopped down wherever it wanted me, and presto! A new person, in a new part of the world, in a new timeline, without all the hassle of creating memories or relationships.

_ Okay, _ I thought,  _ There must be  _ something _ I can do here, other than sit on my ass and think. _

I decided, given the circumstance, that starting to walk was as good a start as any. One direction had to lead somewhere good, or so I hoped. I pulled a branch down from one of the leaning trees, shaking powdery snow down as I tried to break it off. Finally, it snapped, and I stuck it vertically in the ground, sticking out like a sore thumb, so I’d know if and when I circled back here by mistake. Satisfied with my makeshift flagpole, I set off in a random direction.

My legs were aching by the time I finally found a break in the woods. My pants were soaked, and, thick though they were, my legs were starting to feel the chill as well. There were small twigs and leaves sticking off of me in every direction, having been caught in my clothes and hair as I forced my way through the undergrowth. My palms were scratched to all hell, and I could feel blisters on my feet. My lips, too, felt chapped and stiff, and I imagined they were going slightly blue. I briefly imagined how it would feel to die here, alone, in the cold, but quickly brushed it off. 

The clearing I had found had a stream running through it. The banks had mostly frozen over, but the water closer to the centre had rushing water, carrying large hunks of ice with it. It was there that I saw the first sign of life in the barren cold; a large wolf, sipping water from the stream on the opposite side, with his legs spread out so his weight wouldn't break the thin, precarious ice. He hadn't noticed me walk out of the trees.

I ducked down, using what little I had of shelter behind a holly bush. I watched as he drank, barely daring to breathe, though I doubted he could get to me across the roaring water. After what felt like forever, he lifted his head, looked to the side, and sauntered off. His powerful haunches rose and fell with every step. As I watched, I noticed his body was leaner than I had expected, like he hadn’t eaten in a few days. Suddenly, the wind picked up behind me, blowing my hair in my face. The wolf stopped dead in his tracks, turning back and making eye contact with me. In one motion, he pushed off of his front paws, swung his hips back so that he was facing me, and bounded forward until he was at the edge of the river, then stopped. We stared at each other for a lifetime. I didn’t dare try to move or run, knowing he’d catch me. Instead, I sat and looked at him as he paced the length of the icy bank, taking a step into the water, then recoiling from the cold and shaking his paw as though it was wounded. After about ten minutes, by my guess, my heart had slowed down. Neither of us had made a move, and I felt like, at any point, he was going to grow bored of me and walk away.

And so he did, it seemed. He gave a small huff and dropped his haunches, still staring at me with large, dark eyes. With a flick of his tail, he was off, trotting into the trees on his side of the water.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. I sat, motionless, for a while longer, catching my breath and scanning the treeline, in case he came back. The cold was getting less bothersome; I was probably getting frostbite or hypothermia, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

_ Maybe I’ll finally learn whether I can die in other timelines or not,  _ I thought, with a hint of bitterness. Finally, I picked myself up off the ground, and slowly made my way to the water. Still paranoid, I took a few looks around before sitting down again. Cupping my hands in the clear, cool water, I drank as much as I could. The water ran down my chin, stinging as the air chilled it. My fingers, too, started tingling, and I could feel that they were becoming too stiff to bend all the way. Discouraged, I sat down and put my head between my knees, shaking, though from crying or the cold I couldn't tell. Everything was beginning to feel warmer, and I knew I was going to start feeling like sleeping soon, if what I knew about freezing to death were true.

Before I could dwell on that thought any longer, however, a loud  _ CRACK  _ sounded behind me. Startled, I turned back, finding myself face to face with the large wolf from earlier. He was fighting his way through the trees, pushing the small grasses and roots to the side as his feet pressed into the snow. I was terrified, but the cold had almost completely frozen me, and moving was too difficult to manage. Silently, the wolf came closer, and closer, until I could feel the warmth of his breath on my nose. I braced myself for whatever he was about to do, and squeezed my eyes shut.

Unexpectedly, nothing happened for a moment. Then, just as I was about to open my eyes again, something warm and sticky fell into my lap. I jumped in surprise, letting out a small squeak. I waited a few more seconds. Nothing happened. Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked down. The wolf was laying next to me, looking up at me with those large, intimidating eyes. His tail was moving slowly from side to side, making a small pattern in the snow. The warm, sticky thing in my lap was a small, dead rabbit, it’s eyes still open. I stiffened as I stared at it, then looked back to the wolf, who was watching me intently.

It was a few more minutes before I started to formulate an idea of what was happening. The wolf obviously wasn’t going to hurt me - at least, I hoped not - and had brought me the rabbit. Maybe he thought I would eat it? Gulping at the thought, I shivered. Slowly, I placed my hands on the dead animal, and relief flooded my palm. It was still warm, with its blood steaming off of it in the frigid air. I kept my hands there for a long while, while the wolf watched. My hands began to tingle as the blood in my fingertips moved faster again. I started testing their dexterity, curling my pinkie slowly, then trying all four fingers, then, finally, my thumbs. It wasn’t long until I could make a fist again.

During all this time, the wolf was still laying down, staring at me. As I held the rabbit, I noticed him slowly, ever so slowly, inching toward me, pulling himself in small increments by his front paws until his head could rest in my lap. As he put the weight of his skull on my leg, I relaxed, surprising even myself. His fur warmed my knees, and, in a moment of pure impulse, I wrapped my arms around his neck burying my whole face in him as the need to be warm overwhelmed me. He didn’t move as I did so, but his tail tapped gently on the forest floor.


End file.
